Have you guys used Plex lately? We’ve written about the application, which is a Mac-optimized fork of XBMC, in the past, but didn’t mention its latest update. It’s now known as Plex Media Server, and it’s really a great way to watch movies on your Mac. And now with the Media Server update, it can be outfitted with all sorts of plugins that greatly expand its functionality.
Now, I encourage all of you to read through every post on Plex’s site to fully appreciate how much time and effort these guys put into developing it, but I’ll just quickly go over the biggest addition, the App Store, which lets you download plugins for use within Plex. The biggest plugin right now, I would say, is for Hulu. Once installed, you can watch 30 Rock, The Office, etc. from within the multimedia application. There’s also plugins for NPR, Revision 3, Apple’s movie trailers, all sorts of photo blogs, etc.
This new feature lets you download plugins for use within Plex. The biggest plugin right now is for Hulu. Once installed, you can watch 30 Rock, The Office, etc. from within the multimedia application. There’s also plugins for NPR, Revision 3, Apple’s movie trailers, all sorts of photo blogs, etc. It’s useful in that, say I miss an episode of 30 Rock. Normally I’d just fire up Azureus and grab it from wherever I’m gonna grab it, in HD. But say you don’t want to waste ratio on Tina Fey’s latest wacky storyline. No problem, fire up Plex, navigate to the Hulu plugin, and watch the episode right then and there. (Plex, as you may already have guessed, is popular with HTPC (Mac Mini edition!) folks, who may see launching Firefox just to be able to watch a dumb TV episode as being “icky” or whatever.)
So yeah, I know whenever I’m watching, say, a Blu-ray rip of a move I’ve already legally purchased, wink-wink, I use Plex. But that’s just me.